VIENNA - The UN nuclear watchdog fears Iran may be working now to develop a nuclear-armed missile, the agency said on Thursday, throwing independent weight behind Western suspicions of an active Iranian weapons programme. In unusually blunt language surfacing under new chief Yukiya Amano, an International Atomic Energy Agency report for the first time suggested Iran was actively chasing nuclear weapons capability rather than merely having done so in the past. The IAEA seemed to be cautiously going public with suspicions arising from a classified agency analysis leaked in part last year which concluded that Iran has already honed explosives expertise relevant to a workable nuclear weapon. The report also confirmed Iran had produced its first, small batch of uranium enriched to a higher purity -- 20 per cent. Both developments will intensify pressure on Iran to prove it is not covertly bent on "weaponising" enrichment by allowing unfettered access for IAEA inspectors and investigators, something it rejects in protest at U.N. sanctions. The United States is already leading a push for the U.N. Security Council to impose a fourth round of sanctions on Iran because of suspicions that it may be developing nuclear weapons, and has received declarations of support from Russia, which has until now been reluctant to expand sanctions. Tehran says its nuclear programme is meant only to yield electricity or radio-isotopes for agriculture or medicine. It took a diametrically opposing view of the report's conclusions. "The IAEA's new report confirmed Iran's peaceful nuclear activities and the country's non-deviation towards military purposes," Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told the state news agency IRNA. US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the United States did not understand why Iran had refused to "come to the table and engage constructively" over its nuclear programme, adding: "You have to draw some conclusions from that."
